Zatanna #1 – Jamal Campbell, Writer/Artist

Ray – 10/10

Ray: Jamal Campbell has basically been doing the grand tour of DC over the last few years, drawing on Naomi, Far Sector, and Superman among other books and specials. So I was excited to see what he could do as a solo writer/artist – although that pivot from creators is never a guarantee. The choice of Zatanna was also a bold move – the character has recently had a Black Label series, but hasn’t had a main line DC book in a while. You put that together, and what emerges from this first issue is…incredible. This is one of the most visually inventive books to come out of DC in some time, and it makes brilliant use of Zatanna’s history as a superhero and a stage performer.

We catch up with Zatanna as she prepares for a show in the storied Terpsichore Theater, where her father and countless other magicians performed. She practices tricks, helps a young assistant get his confidence back after a minor mishap, and shares some lore about past magicians – including the mysterious Lady in White, an illusionist and jack of all trades who died under mysterious circumstances. It’s all a day in the life – until the posters in the theater suddenly start coming to life, pulling the various crew members into real-life horror shows pulled form classic movies. And in each of them, a pair of mysterious white hands trying to ensure their victims never leave.

Campbell is best known as an artist, of course, so it’s no surprise that the art steals the show here. It transforms for every visit to another world, mimicking the unique style of that genre as Zatanna pulls one backwards-spell after another out of her hat. She’s able to get one person after another back until she tracks down the last one, this one being held by the Lady herself. As she tries to figure out the villain’s motivation, a shocking betrayal sends the story spiraling in a new direction and gives us an epic cliffhanger to set up next month. There are so many plot seeds here, and many are just beginning to be explored. This is a fantastic first issue that does everything a great pilot should to keep readers coming back.

To find reviews of all the DC issues, visit DC This Week.

GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.

Click through to read all of "Review – Zatanna #1: Magic Happens" at GeekDad.If you value content from GeekDad, please support us via Patreon or use this link to shop at Amazon. Thanks!

Deploy your worker bees, collect pollen, and build the most glorious hives!

What Is Propolis?

Propolis is a material made by bees, a mixture of beeswax and spit and plant substances, to fill gaps in their hives. Propolis—the primary subject of this post—is a bee-themed worker placement game for 1 to 4 players, ages 10 and up, and takes about 15–30 minutes to play. (According to the box, at least—I’ve found it generally takes a bit longer than that particularly if you have more players, but presumably it will get faster as players are more experienced.) It’s currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, with a pledge level of $ for a copy of the game. (The Kickstarter campaign is for two different titles—you can check out my review of Point Galaxy here.) Propolis also includes elements of area control, tableau building, and engine building—but we’ll get to all that later.

Propolis was designed by Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, and Shawn Stankewich and published by Flatout Games with AEG, with illustrations by Dylan Mangini.

New to Kickstarter? Check out our crowdfunding primer.

Propolis Components

Note: My review is based on a prototype copy, so it is subject to change and may not reflect final component quality.

Here’s what comes in the box:

• 4 Player boards
• 60 Structure/Landscape cards
• 12 Starting Structure/Queen’s Palace cards
• 16 Solo Mode cards
• 48 Worker Beeples (12 per player color)
• 24 Resource markers(6 per player in 6 different colors)

Kickstarter backers will also get the mini-expansion included, which adds 4 more starting/palace cards and 12 more structure/landscape cards.

All of the cards are double-sided: the bulk of the cards have structures on one side and landscapes on the other. Structures (seen above) are cute little buildings with names like “Marigold Blacksmith” and “Coneflower Bakery.” Each one has the cost to build it at the bottom (a combination of beeples and pollen), and then what it provides at the top. They can generate points, permanent resources, or provide one-time bonuses like extra beeples or pollen. Structures are labeled with a letter from A to D—the typeface is meant to give it that medieval look, but can be a little harder to read at a distance or if you’re sitting at a weird angle from the market.

The backs of the structures are landscape cards—these are where you’ll send your beeples to gather resources. The hex spaces correspond to the five different types of flowers where you can collect pollen. Green circles (showing a bee) are where you can get more beeples, and the grey square spaces are for trading resources. The areas of the cards are distinguished by color and icon, as well as the background illustrations. One thing that I didn’t see anywhere in the rulebook was names for the five different flowers—the yellow ones look like sunflowers and the purple is lavender, but we weren’t entirely sure what to call the others, so mostly we just referred to them by color name. I think it would add just a little more of the flavor to identify the flowers by name.

The smaller set of cards is starting structures and Queen’s palaces. Starting structures are a little basic hive. Each one shows you some number of starting resources at the bottom of the card, and at the top there’s a letter and also a permanent resource—that gives you a discount any time you want to build something that requires that resource. The starting structures all have the same type of scoring: 2 points for a set of two particular letters. It’s likely that you’ll have at least some overlap with other players for the letters that you want, and it’s even possible for two players to have the exact same requirements (though with other differences in the structures).

The backs of the starting structure cards show Queen’s Palaces. Each player may only build one of these at most, and they are the hardest to build—they require beeples and a number of permanent resources, which means you’ll have to build a lot of other structures first instead of just collecting pollen. They’re worth 3 or 4 points each, but the big bonus is that they are a wild letter—at the end of the game you can decide which letter will give you the biggest benefit.

The worker beeples are very cute, and designed so they can be placed standing up or flat. The resource markers are little wooden hexagons, which slot nicely into the player board cutouts so you can track your various resources. The player boards have tracks for all of your pollen, plus a smaller track in the bottom corner for wild resources.

The whole thing comes in a small box—although the game ends up taking quite a bit of space on the table, it’s primarily cards and so it doesn’t take up a lot of space when packed up. The player boards are the largest components, sized to fit in the same box dimensions as Point Salad (and many of Flatout Games’ other titles).

How to Play Propolis

You can download a draft of the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to score the most points by building structures.

Setup

The central area is set up with Queen’s Palace cards, the landscape, and a structure market. Set out a number of Queen’s Palace cards face-up based on the player count, and put the rest away in the box. For the landscape, shuffle the landscape deck and lay out 2 or 3 rows of 4 cards each—the number of rows depends on the player count. Finally, deal out 10 structures face-up to form a market. Set the deck nearby.

Each player gets a player board and a random starting structure, which shows their starting resources, marked on your player board. Everyone takes 9 of their beeples into their personal supply, and puts the other 3 near the landscape cards. The starting structures are numbered at the bottom right—the player with the lowest number goes first, and play goes clockwise from there.

Gameplay

On your turn, you take one of these actions: Deploy, Fortify, Retreat, Construct Structure, or Construct Queen’s Palace.

Deploy: choose an empty landscape card, and place up to 1 beeple per space, and then gain those resources. Hexes provide pollen, green circles give you more beeples from the main supply, and grey spaces let you trade pollen for other pollen. Note that you do not have to fill a card, but you cannot place beeples on a card that already has any beeples on it, even your own.

If you place beeples on the last remaining card in a row, you gain 1 wild resource, and then there will be a check for majority at the end of your turn (explained later).

Fortify: Choose any two of your beeples on the landscape and fortify them, and regain those resources/bonuses.

(Note: the rules say to deploy them standing up, and then lay them down when you fortify, but my gaming group all agreed that it’s easier to place a bunch of bees flat and then only stand up the fortified ones—plus it seems to make more sense visually—so that’s what my photos show.)

Retreat: remove any number of beeples from the landscape and put them back into your personal supply. You may leave any number of your beeples on the landscape.

Construct Structure: Spend the resources to build one of the structures from the market, placing it in front of you, and then refill the market with a new structure. Permanent resources on your existing structures act as a discount, and wild resources may be spent as any color pollen. For instance, in the photo above, the Trillium Shop costs 2 beeples, 3 orange pollen, and 3 pink pollen. I have plenty of beeples, and since my starting structure provides 1 orange pollen, I only need to spend 2 from my supply. I only have 1 pink pollen, but I do have 1 wild pollen as well, so that covers the pink cost. After building this, I now have a permanent wild resource that can be used each time I construct.

Construct Queen’s Palace: Build one of the Queen’s Palace cards from the market. Note that Queen’s Palaces may only be build using permanent resources, not pollen from your supply. Each player may only have one Queen’s Palace.

At the end of your turn, check to see if any of the landscape rows has been filled—that is, there are no completely empty cards. (It’s okay if some of the cards have empty spaces, as long as they aren’t totally empty). If so, then you will check for majority to see who controls the row. Count the number of beeples each player has in that row, with fortified beeples counting as 2. Whoever has the majority will get all of their beeples from that row back to their supply, and can earn 1 wild resource if they weren’t the active player this turn.

Then, remove the right-most empty card and discard it. Slide everything to the right to fill gaps, and refill the row from the deck. It’s possible for there to be a tie for majority—in that case, nobody earns a wild resource and no beeples are removed. The tie may be broken on a future turn if somebody fortifies in that row, or retreats some workers.

In the photo above, the teal player just filled the row on their turn, so they earned 1 wild resource for doing so. They have the majority now (8 to 2) but since they’re the active player, they do not earn another wild resource. They’ll clear all of their beeples from this row. The pink/yellow landscape card at the right will be discarded, and a new landscape card will be refilled on the left side of the row.

Game End

When any player has built 10 structure cards (including their starting structure and Queen’s Palace), finish that round so that all players have had the same number of total turns. Then score!

Some structures have a flat score. Some, including your starting structure, score points for specific sets of letters that you’ve built. Finally, there are structures that will score points based on pairs of resources—these count both permanent resources and pollen left in your supply. (If you have wild resources left over, you may count each one as any single pollen.)

You also score your total remaining resources on your board (not permanent), divided by five.

The player with the highest score wins, with ties going to the player with the most remaining resources, and then the most remaining wild resources.

Why You Should Play Propolis

There’s a part of me that wonders if the initial spark for Propolis was a bit of wordplay: “propolis” as a bee’s construction material, “-opolis” as in cities, worker bees and worker placement. Whatever the origins, the results are a clever blend of mechanics that makes this small game feel like something a bit bigger.

Propolis‘ combination of worker placement to collect resources with area control in the fields is an interesting twist on the genre. The area control kind of sneaks in there—at first, you’re just placing bees to get resources you want, and maybe you fortify because you really want another lavender and there isn’t another free space on the board. But as the landscape starts to fill up, you realize that going in one location may give you resources you want, but will give another player a wild resource and their bees. Another location might not have the resource you want, but you could get a whole pile of bees back into your supply. But is it better to wait it out and see if somebody else might earn you a wild resource?

Fortifying can also be used as a stalling tactic when you’re low on beeples in your supply, because it always feels like something went wrong when you have to retreat, taking a turn just to take some bees back. If you fortify enough times, maybe you can wait out somebody filling up a row where you’ll have majority control.

Understanding how the cards will clear out after majority is also important, because it can let players manipulate the landscape a little bit. You can see by the lengths of the resource tracks on the player boards the relative rarity of the different pollens—there are the most yellow spaces, and the fewest purple. Of course, there’s still luck involved, since some cards will end up getting flipped over as structures, in which case they’ll never return to the landscape rows. In some games, I’ve seen players take up positions simply to help particular cards stick around a little bit longer after majority is checked.

The engine building comes into play with the structures that have permanent resources. They usually aren’t worth as many points, but if you can find a structure that has a letter you already want and it provides a permanent resource, it can pay off, especially getting it early in the game. Wild permanent resources are particularly valuable, of course, but they often get snapped up as soon as they appear in the market if somebody can afford them. And, of course, since you can only buy a Queen’s Palace using permanent resources, you’ll definitely need to plan ahead to get the right ones. That part reminds me a little bit of Splendor, where you could decide how much you want to go for tiles that generate more resources vs. tiles that just generate more points.

Another strategy is to go after the points combos. If your starting card gives you points for C-D sets, then finding another structure that also scores for the same letters will let you double up. Or, maybe you hedge your bets: get another card that scores for A-B sets, and now you’ve covered your bases. There are even a few that will score 4 points for A-B-C-D; of course, with a maximum of 10 structures, that means you can only score that card twice, but 8 points is still a pretty good chunk in this game.

Finally, there’s the resource strategy (though it’s probably not a good standalone strategy). Leftover resources are worth basically 1/5 of a point each, but there are a lot of structures that will give you points for pairs. If you can get a few of those buildings and combine them with some aggressive resource collection and also build a few of the permanent resources that match, that could end up being pretty valuable as well.

The game does end up being pretty quick (though I haven’t gotten close to that 15-minute mark—maybe for a solo game?), considering how much is going on. It feels a little different from a lot of the other Flatout Games titles since it’s a little closer to a traditional Eurogame than the puzzly drafting games that they’re known for, but overall I think it’s a solid game for players who like games about building things.

For more information or to make a pledge, visit the Propolis Kickstarter page!

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Disclosure: GeekDad was loaned a prototype of this game for review purposes.

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Assemble your own galaxy by building solar systems and populating them with planets, moons, and other celestial bodies.

What Is Point Galaxy?

Point Galaxy is a set collection game for 1 to 5 players, ages 10 and up, and takes about 30 minutes to play. It’s currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, with a pledge level of $19 for a copy of the game. Although it’s a followup to Point Salad and Point City, it is not an expansion and you don’t need to be familiar with either of those to enjoy Point Galaxy. (The Kickstarter campaign is for two different titles—you can check out my review of Propolis here.)

Point Galaxy was designed by Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, and Shawn Stankewich and published by Flatout Games with AEG, with illustrations by Dylan Mangini.

New to Kickstarter? Check out our crowdfunding primer.

Point Galaxy Components

Note: My review is based on a prototype copy, so it is subject to change and may not reflect final component quality.

Here’s what comes in the box:

• 5 Starting Sun cards
• 5 Player Aid cards
• 140 Planet/Space cards
• 24 Rocket tokens
• Scorepad

Kickstarter backers will also get a mini-expansion included that has 4 more rocket tokens.

The bulk of the game is the cards, which are double-sided. The planet side has a slightly lighter background and always has a planet on it; the space side may have a sun, moon, asteroid, or wormhole, though the bulk of the cards are suns. Planets are numbered from 1 to 7 and have either one or two colors (though there are some grey planets with an X instead of a number), and there are five total colors in the game. The suns and moons are just labeled “sun” and “moon,” but each planet has a unique name, which is kind of fun.

Each of the colors also has a particular pattern associated with it, used in a little icon in the top left corner of the card, which is intended to help for those who have issues with color vision. We did find, however,  that sometimes it was a little confusing: the pattern on the icon indicates color, but the larger illustration of the planet in the center of the card often uses a different pattern—because those appear to be associated with the number. It’s possible that some of this may get changed before the final product, though, so hopefully in the finished game everything will be easily identifiable.

The rocket tokens are small cardboard tokens, and each one has a particular scoring condition on the back—for the most part the iconography is easy to figure out, though there is a page of clarifications in the rulebook that goes over all of them in detail.

How to Play Point Galaxy

You can download a draft of the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to score the most points by arranging various celestial bodies in your galaxy.

Setup

Shuffle all of the cards together and remove a number based on the player count. Then divide the rest into three roughly even stacks, space-side-up, and reveal two cards from each stack in columns below the stacks, planet-side-up, forming a market of 6 cards.

Mix up the rocket tokens and draw a number based on the player count. Place these face-up near the card market and return the rest to the box.

Give each player a player aid card—one of them is marked with a starting player icon and that player goes first. Give each player a random starting sun card (marked with an S), which is placed on the table in front of them to start their galaxy.

Gameplay

On your turn, you take two cards from the market one at a time and add them to your galaxy (a tableau area in front of you), without flipping them over. Once collected, cards may never be flipped over to the other side. At the end of your turn, flip cards from the stacks to refill the columns as needed.

Your galaxy will consist of a number of solar systems—each solar system can have at most one sun and one asteroids card, and below that a vertical sequence of planets, moons, and wormholes. Whenever you add cards to a solar system, it must go at the top or bottom of the sequence, never inserted in between cards. Any card except asteroids can be used to start a new solar system.

Here’s a look at the various cards and how they work.

Suns: The sun is placed above the solar system sequence, and will score points for things that are in its solar system. For instance, your starting sun will give you points for each set of two specific colored planets.

Asteroids: Asteroids must be tucked behind a sun, and each sun card can only have one asteroids card. At the end of the game, asteroids will score points for the players who have the most asteroids cards.

Planets: All of the planets in your solar system must be in a sequence that goes from lowest to highest or highest to lowest, so once you’ve placed your second planet in a system, all the other planets you add will need to go in the same direction even if there are other non-planet cards in the sequence. “X” planets can count as any number.

Moons: Moons show either one or two colors on them—they will score if they are placed adjacent to planets of the matching colors. (For the two-color moons, they must be sandwiched between planets of those two different colors.)

Wormholes: Wormholes reset the number sequence, letting you create a second number sequence of planets on the other side of the wormhole.

There are two other features that may appear on cards: rockets and research symbols. Every time you have accumulated 5 rocket icons in your entire galaxy, you get to take one of the rocket tokens, which will score points if you meet the conditions by the end of the game.

Research symbols are the little pennants at the top right of some cards, and they are labeled from A to G. You will get points for collecting different research symbols.

Game End

The game ends when there aren’t enough cards to refill the market. (Note that if one of the stacks runs out, divide the biggest remaining stack in half to make a new stack—the game only ends when there aren’t enough total cards in the stacks.) Everyone will have taken 13 turns.

• Suns score based on the specified sets within their own solar systems.
• Asteroids score points based on who has the most, second most, and third most—in case of ties, you add up the points for the tied places and split them as evenly as possible.
• Each solar system will score between 1 and 12 points based on how many different planet numbers are present in that system. Repeated numbers (possible with wormholes) do not score again.
• Moon cards score their points if they are adjacent to the correct planets.
• Score between 1 and 12 points based on how many different research symbols you’ve collected across your entire galaxy.
• Rocket tokens score based on their specific conditions.

The player with the highest score wins, with ties going to the player with the most total rockets.

Why You Should Play Point Galaxy

Point Galaxy sits in a nice spot between the original Point Salad and its immediate successor Point City, going back to the quick-pick card-drafting but providing more complexity in the set collection and scoring options. One of the things that made Point Salad one of our favorites back in 2019 (aside from the dad joke title) was how snappy it was: on your turn, you took one or two cards and that was mostly it. One side had vegetables, and the other had all of the scoring conditions for the veggies, so you had to figure out the balance between getting scoring opportunities and finding the cards to fulfill those conditions. (Not to mention being careful about conditions that would cost you points!)

Point City was a couple steps up in complexity: the card-drafting was from a larger grid and you had to take cards adjacent to each other, and you had to collect resources (one side of the cards) in order to build buildings (the other side of the cards). Scoring opportunities came from some of the buildings, but particularly by completing the civic buildings to get the scoring tokens. I enjoyed Point City but it felt like a big jump from Point Salad.

Point Galaxy goes back to something more like the original card-drafting (the difference is that you always take two cards no matter where they come from), and the sun cards are a little bit like the original scoring conditions. However, the solar systems mean that you have to organize the cards you collect into groups, which can have various effects on the scoring. The rocket tokens are like the civic tokens from Point City: additional scoring opportunities if you can meet their conditions.

Grouping the cards into solar systems means there are more considerations when you choose cards. Ideally, you want to hit 7 unique numbers in every solar system to maximize the points, but you also want to collect the specific features that match the sun. Plus it doesn’t hurt to have a few moons in there for extra points. Wormholes generally aren’t points on their own, but they help you fill in numbers that you skipped over earlier, and may have other features like rockets or research symbols. I like the fact that the more central numbers tend to have fewer bonuses like rockets, where as the numbers at the end, 1 and 7, will often have more rockets—if you play one of those, then you’ve finished off that end of your number line, so the timing is important.

Each player is mostly playing their own game—you can’t directly interact with another player’s galaxy. However, the asteroids are a race for the most, so it’s important to keep an eye on how many asteroids other players have. And, of course, there’s good ol’ hate-drafting, where you can take cards from the market that you know will help your opponents. As in Point Salad, it’s also possible to keep somebody from getting a particular card by taking a different card from that column, so it flips over. Don’t want your rival to gain an asteroid but you don’t have room for one yourself? Take a planet from that column, and the asteroid will get flipped over at the end of your turn. (Of course, if the next card revealed is also an asteroid, then that’s just bad luck for you.)

Since you can start a solar system with just about any card, you can also gamble a little—create a solar system that’s all green and blue planets, and hope that you’ll find a sun that scores for those colors! There are also suns that will score for research tags, rockets, or wormholes, so you can try to build up a system that scores well for the planets and moons first, and wait for the right sun to show up later. As with Point Salad, there are a bunch of different things in Point Galaxy that score points, and it’s hard to maximize all of them at once, so a large part of the game is figuring out how to make do with what’s available on your turn, knowing that sometimes you may have to go in a different direction if the stars don’t align.

Overall, I’ve really been enjoying Point Galaxy and the way it captures a lot of the feel of Point Salad but ramped up just a bit. If you’re a fan of the original, it’s definitely worth checking out!

For more information or to make a pledge, visit the Point Galaxy Kickstarter page!

Click here to see all our tabletop game reviews.

 To subscribe to GeekDad’s tabletop gaming coverage, please copy this link and add it to your RSS reader.

Disclosure: GeekDad was loaned a prototype of this game for review purposes.

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With over 160,000 attendees this year and more guests than you can shake a lightsaber at, MegaCon has cemented its place in the hearts of geeks and fans. I’ve been attending MegaCon since 2002, and as someone who has watched it grow, it has been one heck of a ride. This year was full of reunions, Hollywood guests, and cosplay that was beyond incredible. Let’s get into why MegaCon 2025 was the con of my year. 

1. 1. Reunions Abound
      Jude Law and the rest of the cast of the Skeleton Crew, former Superman actors, Lethal Weapon (Mel Gibson and Danny Glover), and Twilight all had heartfelt reunions. The Superman panel was particularly intriguing, with the panel being asked the ever-important “trunks or no trunks” question. Surprisingly enough, most said trunks.
   2. Matthew Lillard
      Matthew Lillard is known for being a favorite among his fans for his personality and friendly nature with everyone. In his panel, he talked about how the Shaggy “walk” was created and demonstrated the process for the crowd. A funny part in the panel was when he started to demonstrate, only to see a Shaggy cosplayer leaving the panel. He called him out in his friendly way, “I’M ABOUT TO SHOW YOU HOW TO WALK!” There wasn’t a fan who met him that didn’t leave with a smile and a memory that would last a lifetime.
      
   3. Superman Of My Heart
      I’ve already mentioned the Superman reunion in number 1, but this is more of a personal moment. My husband has an autograph from every actor who has played Superman (live and animated) on TV. This year, Brandon Routh came to MegaCon, and this was his first time meeting a movie screen Superman actor. The wait was worth it because Brandon took a good five minutes with my husband and I was able to tell my own Superman story. Before we left, Brandon came from behind the table and gave me and my husband both tight, loving hugs. We walked away feeling like we could fly.
   4. Sooooo Many Panels
      This year, the convention was held at the Orange County Convention Center, North/South side. This is the newer part of the convention center area and MegaCon took up the entire thing. I like this side because it’s more spread out and there’s plenty of natural light. It also means more panels because of the extra space. My husband stuck to the Superman, Cosplay, and Paranormal panels, while I was interested in the theme park track. He learned about the haunted Florida side of things while I dove into the science of theme parks. This is usually a weekend we spend together, but thanks to the variety of panels and tight schedules, it was more of a “let’s meet at dinner and talk about our day” kind of experience (and we loved every minute of it).
      
   5. Cosplay
      There is always incredible cosplay at MegaCon and this year was no exception. Jinx from Arcane was the most popular of the anime costumes. Deadpool and Spider-Man were around with their usual gusto. Thanks to Matthew Lillard being in attendance, I saw quite a few Five-Nights-A-Freddy’s costumes. One Five-Nights-A-Freddy’s I learned, was made by a young boy who has been building costumes for the past three years on his own. Impressive! I made my red carpet debut with my husband as Jedi Belle and Jedi Beast. It was an interesting experience for someone with anxiety and fear of being the center of attention. Definitely something I’ll do again, but maybe next time on a Friday so it’s a little less intense.
   6. Artist Alley Brought Their A-Game
      The artists in Artist Alley brought their a-game with keychains (so many keychains), Ita bags, cups, and nails. That’s right, nails. Press on nails were popular this year at the con and I saw at least four or five artists selling their custom designs. One booth sold only press on nails and they were always busy.I bought a “They/Them” pronouns pin and a very niche but oh so funny “Never stop working on yourself” pin of the famous I-4 Eye-sore. The artist told me that people from out of state request that pin all the time, so I guess our little landmark has a following.
   7. Dapper Danielle and Friends
      You can’t have a convention in Orlando, Florida, without having some Disney influencers show up to walk you through the most magical place on Earth. Dapper Danielle brought a limited amount of exclusive keychains and pins, and she sold out by Friday. I was lucky to grab her Figment and Clarice keychains on Thursday. Dapper Danielle, along with Disney Dan, Bibbidi Bobbidi Beard, and Live LaughLem hosted a couple of panels over the weekend, talking about how to create Disney-centric content as well as a virtual walkthrough of Hollywood Studios. I was happy to hear that her book, I Love Disney’s Magic Kingdom: 100+ Surprising Facts, Magical Quizzes, Fan-Favorite Trivia, and More about Disney’s Magic Kingdom!, would be released soon.
      
   8. Nice Mix of Vendors
      There was a very nice mix of vendors this year. A vendors that took my money including Whirl and Twirl who raved about their painless headbands. I may have bought a few too many of them. I also nabbed a pair of cargo pants from Offset Shwa I had been eyeing since last year. I hit up my con favorite, The Legging Lass for a new dress and a skirt. My other purchase was from Advanced drink mix. They had an insulated shaker cup and a wide variety of hydration, energizing, and focusing drink mixes. If you bought the cup, you got free refills at the drink station for the entire con. My favorite flavor was sour gummy worm. I’ll be posting a full review of their drink mixes soon! I could easily have spent a lot more money on Ita bags, pins, and more but alas, my bank account said no. 
   9. Organization Is The Name of the Game
      MegaCon was insanely organized this year. With the exception of Artist Alley being a little chaotic in the layout, it was well set up, and it was easy to find my way around and back to places I wanted to check out later. They maximized the floor space with a good mix of vendors, artists, and food options. Getting your badge and through security was a breeze. Special thanks to the Orange County Sheriff’s office for being there in strong numbers to keep us all safe.
   10. Big Names, Big Games
       This year, we had some big names on the floor like Intel, Army, Navy, NASA, Disney, SeaWorld, Hasbro, and Enso rings. For some, this was their first time and they had a hack of a first impression. Intel had a computer building competition where you raced to beat the clock (or opponent) in building a computer the fastest. Army and Intel both had e-sport gaming areas for people to play and compete. It was cool to see this area of fandom represented on the convention floor.

Honorable Mentions

1. Zen Den
   There were two Zen Dens at the con this year. In previous years, we had a quiet room, but it was empty with a few chairs and no real “space,” if you know what I mean. This year, thanks to Guardians MH we had a nice, quiet space complete with fidgets, coloring, and earplugs. They also had free cold water. What told me they knew their stuff was when I saw the lemon juice packets and sour warheads. For those not in the know, sour helps calm anxiety attacks. It shocks your brain back into logic mode or something like that and essentially calms you down.

   This space was a favorite of mine. One of the rooms was close to the paranormal section, where my husband was most of the time on the South side and so I would go in there while he was in a panel and chill. The fidgets were free and they enforced the “quiet” rule.The group also had tables on both sides of the convention with free convention mental health kits. Each kit had a fidget, notebook with a pen, a coloring book, and cards with tips on handling your mental health at a convention. I could write an entire post about this group alone (and I just might, so stay tuned to GeekDad).

2. The Book Nook
   
   The Book Nook needs an honorable mention because it was the first year MegaCon did something like this. It was a special room, off to the side of the main panel room, that was for readers. It had a few vendors selling sprayed edge books, Kindle covers, book dragons, and more. They also had author signings and friendship bracelet activities throughout the con. It was easy to spot with there being a giant “Once Upon A Time…” book display right outside along with a Free Little Library.

Disclaimer: GeekDad was given a press badge into this event.

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Over two decades ago, Cornelia Funke started a story about magical words, featuring a bookbinder who had the ability to bring stories to life by reading them aloud, but at a cost. While reading a book called Inkheart to his wife, Mo Folchart unleashed the book’s villain and a couple other characters, but his wife vanished into the book. Over the course of three books, Funke immersed us in this story about Mo and his daughter, of storybook characters brought into our world, and even the writer of the book, Fenoglio. Eventually we even made our way into the world of the book, where new adventures awaited—as well as new villains to face.

My wife and I read all three books—Inkheart, Inkspell, and Inkdeath—when they first came out and revisited them when our own kids were old enough, but it has been a long time. (Inkdeath was first published in 2007.) So I was surprised when I found out that there was a fourth book in the series, Inkworld: The Color of Revenge, published in November last year. I decided it was time for a re-read of the originals before I dove into the new book.

Since it’s hard to say a whole lot about the latest book without spoilers for the rest of the trilogy, I’ll start with some general, non-spoilery things for those of you who haven’t already read those and then you can skip the rest. These are definitely stories for people who love books: one of the main characters is a bookbinder, and Meggie’s great-aunt Elinor is a book lover who has an enormous library and (at least at first) seems to care more for books than people.

The author of Inkheart (the book inside the book, that is) shows up as a character, and Funke definitely has a lot of fun with Fenoglio, too. He’s so proud of the characters he’s created, and at first he doesn’t take the book’s villain seriously because he’s just so delighted with what a good job he did making an interesting evil character. Throughout the series, Fenoglio also struggles with some of the things that most writers experience, but often in a more literal way: losing control of his characters and his world, the inability to think of what to write, forgetting pieces of his story.

In the second and third books, things get even more magical when the characters move from “our” world into the world of the book, raising all sorts of new questions. How will the story play out, now that the cast of characters has changed? Do Fenoglio’s words still have power when he himself has been transported into his story? Fenoglio is frequently frustrated by things that he didn’t write—characters he didn’t make up, situations that he had not foreseen. The story has a life of its own, and it’s not entirely clear who’s writing it. (The answer, of course, is that Funke loves to torture her favorite characters as much as Fenoglio did.) The world of the story is one of princes and castles, fairies and glass men, traveling performers and robbers—and there is certainly a lot of intrigue. Mo, Meggie, and the rest of the “real” people get tangled up in the story.

Okay, now for the spoilers, so if you haven’t read the series yet and want to preserve the surprises, stop here!

One of the major characters in the second book is Orpheus, a young man in the real world who also has the ability to read things out of books. He makes a deal to read Dustfinger back into Inkheart, his favorite book as a kid, but then eventually reads some of the surviving villains back into the book along with Mo—who winds up in mortal peril. Meggie is able to get herself into the story to find her parents, and later brings Orpheus himself into the story because they need his help—but instead of using his mastery of words to help them, he instead makes himself wealthy and starts looking for ways to get even more power.

All of that comes to a head in the third book, where there are several figures all vying for power, and Orpheus is in the middle of it, trying to control things in his favor. By the end of the book, most of the villains are finally defeated and Orpheus flees to the north, and you get a sort of “happily ever after” ending—and that’s what I thought for all this time. Of course, that one loose end was never tied up, and that’s where Inkworld: The Color of Revenge picks up.

Five years after the events of Inkdeath, Orpheus is still angry and resentful, all the more so because he has lost his ability to write and read whatever he wants into existence in this world. Dustfinger, once his childhood hero, is now his sworn enemy, and Orpheus vows revenge. Without the use of his once-magical voice, Orpheus turns to other sources of power, seeking out a Shadow Reader who can create magical spells for him to use against his enemies. One of the interesting things about this book is that the world of Inkheart has always seemed like a magical place (both to me as a reader and to the characters who come from the “real” world)—but within that world, most of the characters have a mistrust of magic. Dustfinger’s ability to talk to fire isn’t magic—it’s a process that, I suppose, counts as science in that world. So the introduction of characters who do what’s considered magic in this world is a novelty, and changes the rules again of what is and isn’t possible.

Inkworld is a significantly shorter book than the first three: they clock in at over 1,500 pages, and Inkworld is a slim 300 pages. Even a lot of the chapters in the book are shorter, some only a page or two. But one of the biggest cuts is that a lot of the characters from the earlier books (and there were a lot to keep track of!) are sidelined for a lot of this story, magically trapped and out of commission. Dustfinger and his best friend the Black Prince (both of whom are finally given first names) face off against Orpheus, and we don’t end up jumping around to check in on so many different threads of the story as before. Orpheus does have a couple new associates—in particular, the failed troubador Baldassare Rinaldi, one of this book’s new villains. He does Orpheus’ dirty work for him with pleasure, and is especially despicable.

I really enjoyed my trip back into the Inkworld—there were a lot of details about the stories that I had forgotten, so I’m glad I re-read the whole thing. (Inkworld does have a short introduction that fills you in, just in case you want to get right to the new stuff.) It feels like it finally wraps everything up so that all of the original characters can finally have their happily ever after without the shadow of Orpheus (or any of the other villains) hanging over them. And the story also brings in a few new heroes; it feels a little bit like the changing of the guard, like Fenoglio’s old story is finally giving way to make room for these new characters that he hadn’t invented himself, going to locations that he didn’t make up. Whether we will get to find out where the story goes from here is still a mystery.

My Current Stack

Aside from the Inkworld series, I’ve also just finished Young Hag and the Witches’ Quest by Isabel Greenberg, a graphic novel retelling of Arthurian legends, mostly from the perspective of Morgan le Fay. More on that soon, along with another book by Greenberg, Glass Town, which is about the imaginary realm created by the Brontës when they were children. I’ve also been doing a re-read of Bad Machinery by John Allison. I had the first 5 collected volumes and really enjoyed them years ago, and came across them in my daughter’s room recently and decided to give them a re-read. Still a blast, and makes me want to go catch up on whatever happened after these stories.

On the non-fiction front, I’m still making my way through Against Platforms by Mike Pepi but although it’s a slim volume it’s slow reading for me. I also started reading When We Walk By by Kevin Adler and Donald Burnes, a book about homelessness in America, and it has already shown me some of the ways that I’ve fallen into stereotypes and assumptions.

Disclosure: I received a review copy of Inkworld for this review; affiliate links to Bookshop.org help support my writing and independent bookstores!

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One-half of the Adventures on Trains creators and the writer of several other excellent children’s books, M.G. Leonard now brings us Hunt for the Golden Scarab. It’s an exciting and thoughtful thriller for middle-grade readers.

Being a UK-based GeekDad I often find myself loving books that aren’t readily available in the US, where most of our lovely readers reside. The book currently features in a prominent campaign by the UK’s leading bookseller chain and I can see why they think it should sell bucketloads. Wherever you are in the world, I wholeheartedly recommend you pick it up.

Hunt for the Golden Scarab is beautifully illustrated with black and white drawings by Manuel Sumberac.

What Is Hunt for the Golden Scarab?

Sim and his mum, Calli, live in an apartment attached to a dusty museum. It’s the first place they’ve stayed for any length of time. Sim goes to school, has made some friends, and is finally living something close to a normal life.

This all changes when large and violent strangers turn up, forcing Sim and his mum to hide in a part of the museum Sim has never seen before. The reason he’s never been there? His mum can travel back in time.

Sim and Calli flee from the museum, taking refuge with Sim’s uncle Emmett. Sim didn’t know the existence of Emmett until he arrived at his uncle’s apartment. Here, Sim also meets Jeopardy, his cousin.

Emmett and Cali are “Time Keys.” People who can use music to travel through magic portals that lead back in time. The pair are unsanctioned by the “Time Council;” a body that has nominal control of the world’s time travelers. The Time Council has now been taken over by hardliners who want to use their power to dominate the other Time Keys.

Sim and Jeopardy discover, that the Time Council is searching for the Golden Scarab of Nefertiti; something thought to give its bearer an unnaturally long life. The pair, along with Calli and Emmett, must head to Egypt to stop the council from gaining control of the Scarab. Its secrets may lie in the 21st century, but perhaps they’ll need to travel to the time of Howard Carter, or possibly back to the time of Tutankhamun himself.

Why Read Hunt for the Golden Scarab?

This is an excellently paced children’s novel filled with action and history. It’s a great blend of ideas – how its time travel works, and facts – the book is stuffed full of information about the history of Egypt and what life was like in the ancient kingdom of the Pharaohs.

Sim and Jeopardy are great characters, around which everything else is built. Sim’s mum, a kickass martial arts expert, makes a wonderful guardian of the pair. Her duplicitous brother, Emmett, not so much. Sim’s shadowy can’t-be-trusted uncle adds an interesting “enemy within” foil to the narrative.

Through Emmett, M.G. Leonard adds shades of grey. He’s not an out-and-out baddie but he is selfish; even to the point of selling out his family if it gets him what he wants. He’s weak and cowardly and therefore a more subtle villain than the more traditional wrongdoers that make up the Time Council.

Hunt for the Golden Scarab has interesting things to say about historical artifacts and their acquisition by colonialists during earlier times. It provokes a nuanced conversation about preservation versus the cultural belonging of relics from antiquity. I very much enjoyed Sim and Jeopardy’s respect for the people and objects they found on their travels.

Overall, Hunt for the Golden Scarab is classic children’s adventure fiction that engages throughout. There’s a least one more book to come, The Legend of Viking Thunder but it’s a series that could run and run. If the books are all as good as this, let’s hope the Time Keys can explore for many more volumes!

If you would like to pick up a copy of Hunt for the Golden Scarab you can do so here, in the US, and here, in the UK. (Affiliate Links)

If you enjoyed this review, check out my other book reviews, here. 

I received a copy of this book in order to write this review.

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DC vs. Vampires World War V: Darkness and Light #1 – Matthew Rosenberg, Writer; Nikola Cizmesija, Daniel Bayliss, Artists; Francesco Segala, Pierluigi Casolini, Colorists

Ray – 8/10

Ray: Before the main series resumes, we’re getting this double-sized special telling stories from the fringes of the ongoing war. Themed to darkness and light, the first one absolutely lives up to its name, focusing on Harper Row as her failed attempts to protect her brother from the vampires results in her being turned and essentially becoming the pet of the most sadistic Vampire General – Wonder Woman. I’m not sure why Diana winds up getting villainized so often in these AUs, but I guess it’s part of the theme here. While her brother becomes essentially food supply for the vampires, Harper is subject to Diana’s attempts to turn her into a true bloodsucker, all the while dealing with the intense desire to end this twisted second life of hers. It’s bleak, hopeless, and honestly a bit unsettling given the horrible fate that two queer kids meet in it. Definitely the darkest part of this series so far.

Daniel Bayliss takes over on art for the second part, which finds Alfred Pennyworth at his wits’ end and almost out of energy after escaping the vampires with his new GL ring. He’s saved by an extremely obscure character – Joshua Jackam, Weather Wizard’s son. It turns out Josh is working with Guy Gardner – who is literally half the man he used to be after an encounter with Wonder Woman and is using his ring to keep himself alive indefinitely. It’s a very unsettling image at times, but Guy (and his constantly shifting hologram bottom half) is able to teach Alfred some much-needed Lantern tricks before Wonder Woman shows up for a rematch. This is definitely the better of the two stories, albeit with a weird dark sense of humor that sometimes feels out of step with the rest of the series. Still, the idea of Alfred as a superhero is the best thing to come out of this series so far.

To find reviews of all the DC issues, visit DC This Week.

GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.

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